Ireland sees huge surge in sparkling wine imports

Irish consumers are lapping up sparkling wine, with the category seeing a 58% uplift in volume sales and 35% in value sales during the first half of 2025.

Ireland imported wines worth €165 million in the first half of the year, representing an 8.9% value leap compared to the same period in 2024. Total volume sales saw an even bigger jump, growing by 13.5% to 43.04 million litres in the first half of 2025. Hailing it as a “robust recovery”, analysts have picked out a number of trends behind Ireland’s import success.

Lower-priced fizz

Sparkling wine led the expansion, with fizz imports reaching €16.7 million, an impressive 34.9% increase compared with the first half of 2024, and volume sales shooting up by 58.9%, to 3.44 million litres.

However, the data (compiled by The Spanish Interprofessional Wine Organisation) suggests that Irish consumers are specifically seeking out lower-priced sparkling wines, as despite the category’s overall value growth, the average price per litre for sparkling wine fell by 15% to €4.86.

Enchantée

Beyond sparkling, France has been the big winner, with French wine exports to Ireland totalling €40.1 million, up 37.6% year-on-year, and accounting for nearly a quarter (24.1%) of total imported value. Staggeringly, the value of imported French wine was about €14m higher than that of its closest contender, Chile, which sold €26 million worth of wine to the Irish market. Volume sales from France also nearly doubled to reach 8.5 million litres.

Italy was third on the leader board, with €25.1 million worth of wine sales (+18.4%) and 7.9 million litres (+15%).

Collectively, France, Chile and Italy account for around 55% of the total value of wines imported by Ireland, and 58% of the volume.

Better bulk

Bulk wine continues to represent only a small share of the Irish market, amounting to €1.27 million and 0.29 million litres. However, it recorded significant growth of 25.8% in value and 4.7% in volume in the first half of the year, with bulk wine reaching an average price of €4.37 per litre, 20.2% higher than last year.

Bag-in-box wines saw a value increase of 7.6%, suggesting that consumers are increasingly willing to fork out more for the format.